


Hearts and Peppermint Bark

by shinguji



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: And it’s never touched on, Because these kids would go through a lot even in HPA AUs, But really really slight, Finally, Fluff, Getting Together, Hurt/Comfort, I know it’s not winter anymore shut up, Multi, Off topic but all of my titles sound like Hallmark movies, Polyamory, The paparazzi suck, Yes I WILL continue to write fics about being a teen celebrity, mentions of abusive parents, mentions of scars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-16
Updated: 2020-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:21:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23176135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinguji/pseuds/shinguji
Summary: Even though Sonia’s pretty sure she knows how Kazuichi and Gundham feel about her (and each other), they still (somehow) haven’t confirmed a thing. She’s decided that she’s going to change that.
Relationships: Soda Kazuichi/Tanaka Gundham, Sonia Nevermind/Soda Kazuichi, Sonia Nevermind/Soda Kazuichi/Tanaka Gundham, Sonia Nevermind/Tanaka Gundham
Comments: 12
Kudos: 135





	Hearts and Peppermint Bark

**Author's Note:**

> It’s already faded into springtime, but here’s more wintery Sonsoudam stuff because I am WEAK (and it never gets cold enough here). With the last one, I had an excuse: it was actually Christmas. I have no excuse for this. Oops. Anyway, basically they’re on one of their first “dates” because I said so and I’m a sucker for this stuff. There’s a little bit of sad stuff, but it’s mostly happy (and cheesy).

“The bitter winds of winter surely gnaw at your porcelain skin, princess,” Gundham said quietly, gingerly taking my gloved hand in his bandaged one. “Here! Please,” he suddenly shouted, kneeling dramatically, “accept mine humble offering: the infamous scarf of Gundham Tanaka, Supreme Overlord of Ice!”

“Gundham, stop that!” Kazuichi whisper-shouted, glaring at the both of us and waving his hands in protest. “We’re in public! People are gonna… I dunno, think you’re proposing or something!”

Indeed, some passersby were shooting us confused glances. Of course, that was to be expected when three eccentric teenage D-list celebrities were stopping up foot traffic on a city sidewalk with their stupid antics.

I giggled at the gesture and pulled my hand away. “Ah, thank you, Gundham, but I think you and the Devas need it more than I do. Besides, I dressed warmly for today’s outing!” I declared proudly, gesturing to my coat and perfectly matching fuzzy hat. From living in a freezing palace in the snowy mountains of Novoselic, I had quite the impressive winter wardrobe.

Gundham reluctantly stood, throwing the end of his scarf over his shoulder dejectedly. “Very well. Let us pray for her health and sanity… and pray that frostbite does not claim both her body and mind before we depart from this wicked cold!” he cried, looking at Kazuichi. The hamsters peeking out from his scarf nodded in agreement. 

“It’s really not that cold, man,” Kazuichi grumbled, shaking his head dismissively. “I think she’s fine,” he added with a poorly concealed shiver, gritting his sharp teeth together.

Raising a penciled-in eyebrow, Gundham interjected with a sudden, “Oh?” and fell to his knees again, unraveling his scarf. “Do you, perhaps, require the unholy—”

“I’ll take it if you stop making a scene!” Kazuichi groaned with a loud stomp, accidentally making the scene even worse.

“Kehehe…” Gundham laughed, standing again, “very well, prince. But know this: the raw, unmatched, unmistakable power of that garment may grow too great, even for you! If your vessel cannot handle the responsibility, the fault is no one’s but your own.”

Kazuichi looked like he was going to faint, teeth still chattering. “Prince?” he asked incredulously, as if he had ignored the rest of Gundham’s ominous warning.

Contentedly, Kazuichi took the ragged purple scarf from Gundham and buried his face in it. “Ah, sweet, sweet heat… hey, that rhymed!” he said excitedly.

As I laughed, I remembered a time only a few months ago when I would have been irritated to no end by his childishness, whereas now, I was walking alongside him, thinking about how cute his idiocy was, Gundham on the other side of him, surely thinking the same.

In fact, this almost felt like…

“Would you two consider this a date?”

Immediately, they both broke out into their respective expressions of embarrassment: Gundham blushed and instinctively reached to pull up his scarf, which wasn’t there, and Kazuichi practically screamed, eyes wide. “Agh! What made you ask that all of a sudden?”

“Oh, my apologies if that was inappropriate,” I replied, in what I hoped was a polite tone. “I was merely curious. That is all, really!”

Gundham chewed on his bottom lip, going completely silent. For the first time, I could see his neck. There were dozens of tiny, dull scars, some fresher than others, spanning the entirety of the visible skin which must have resulted from the Devas constantly sitting inside his scarf. When he caught me staring, he threw one hand over his face in embarrassment, the other over his throat. “Ah, uhm,” he started, clearing his throat, “what, pray tell, led you to that conclusion?”

“Well, it is simply that this is our first public outing together, I suppose,” I answered. Sometimes it was difficult to remain nonchalant when saying things like this, even for me, but as a dignified princess, I had to try my best!

Still, it was hard… especially since we had never really confirmed our relationship. Kazuichi and Gundham had gotten over their rivalry, Kazuichi had accidentally let it slip that he would consider kissing Gundham while we were playing Truth or Dare, and by this point, I was confident that we all felt the same about each other.

It was easy to forget, though, that polyamory wasn’t something common or accepted in Japan. In fact, it wasn’t really common anywhere outside of Novoselic. I had discussed the idea of the three of us being in a relationship before, but it was always shut down by Gundham going on a rant to change the subject, or Kazuichi not even understanding that you could date more than one person without cheating.

“Sonia,” Kazuichi started nervously, dropping the usual title that preceded my name, “why do you keep, uh… talking about stuff like that?”

Gundham’s eyes were wandering over the clothing inside the storefront facade windows and the pigeons on the street, blatantly trying to distance himself from the conversation.

“Well… I would not mind it,” I replied slowly, measuring my words and keeping them intentionally vague to prevent Gundham and Kazuichi from freaking out. “Would you?”

“It?” Gundham asked, deepening his voice in a failed attempt to sound unaffected by my words.

I cleared my throat and arranged my next words in my mind before daring to attempt to say them. “If the three of us were in a relationship.”

Silence fell over us again. Gundham was chewing on the corner of his lip and rolling his earring between his fingers, and Kazuichi scratched the side of his arm nervously, fiddling with the patterned ends of Gundham’s scarf. The din of the city seemed muted.

“ _ Aaaaaaagh! _ ”

Kazuichi was suddenly clutching the side of my sweater dress, screeching as he clawed at the purple scarf around his neck and flung it onto the sidewalk.

Gundham and I were immediately glaring daggers at him, as were most of the other city-goers. “Is it really that terrible of an idea?” I asked with a sigh. “I did not foresee you being so opposed, but I suppose I understand.”

“Does that really constitute such a violent reaction?” Gundham asked sharply and turned to grimace at Kazuichi. “Fool. Your shriek could shatter glass. Stop that,” he said tersely, kneeling to pick up his scarf and tenderly scooping the Devas out of it, who bit his bandaged hand in reply. 

“No, it wasn’t about… they bit my neck, man!” Kazuichi whined as he dropped my dress and shot me a vaguely apologetic glance. “I didn’t realize your hamst—Devas were in there!”

I laughed to myself as the two of them continued to bicker, although I was a little sad that my attempts at sparking something official were ruined yet again. 

Still, I had to persevere!

They were still arguing, although apparently Kazuichi had said something to make Gundham blush furiously. Now was as good a time as any, I supposed.

“Do not dodge my question!” I interjected.

They both went silent again. Gundham cringed again, pulling his scarf back around his neck and hiding in it. Kazuichi just sighed. “M—Sonia, I…”

“You can reject the idea! I do not even care at this point. But at least give me an answer. Please.”

“I’ve thought about it, Sonia, I have,” he said finally, desperation in his voice and sadness in his eyes. “When you’ve mentioned it before, I mean, and… it’d be amazing. It really would! I’ve already dealt with trying to accept all that shit. I’ve already spent the last week thinking about it instead of sleeping. I’ve already beat myself up over trying to figure out who the hell I am and how I feel.”

Gundham and I both frowned at this. “Kazuichi…”

“But I can’t! I’m finally fine with it, it’s finally something I  _ want _ , even. But I really can’t. We can’t. There are so many reasons why we can’t, Sonia,” he sighed. “We’re Ultimates. Even being in public together like this is scary enough. I don’t want paparazzi showing up more than they already do! We can’t confirm anything for ourselves. It’ll just be done for us, without our permission or anything. And Gundham, your mom’s fine. But my dad would kill me the second he heard—which wouldn’t be from me, it’d be from the news or some bullshit. And Sonia’s supposed to be, like, betrothed to some princely dude or something!” he rambled, rubbing his palms against his eyes in frustration. “I’m sorry, it’s just… it pisses me off that we can’t be normal teenagers! Y’know?”

I nodded solemnly. Gundham’s hamsters had crept out of his scarf and nestled themselves into his hair, nodding along sympathetically as Kazuichi continued. “It scares me so much that there are pictures of us out there when we thought we were just hanging out in private. You never see anyone taking pictures either, but you see your face posted all over those damn forums and printed on trash magazines and stuff. I hate that rumors get out about us the second we even speak outside of school! It’s terrifying!”

Gundham was silent, wordlessly stepping ahead and leading us toward a candy shop. After a moment of confusion from Kazuichi, who looked like he was trying his absolute hardest not to cry in public, Gundham let Kazuichi take the lead and stood beside him instead as we walked up the stairs together. Gundham was humming softly under his breath: a lullaby I sometimes heard him mumble to his hamsters.

“Uhm, are we going in here? Why?” Kazuichi asked nervously, shooting me a confused glance as well, as if I knew what was going on. I could do nothing but simply shrug in return. I was a bit confused myself, although I grasped the general idea: Gundham was trying to get Kazuichi to relax while also bringing him someplace away from people. The sentiment was… unusually sweet, coming from someone like him. “People are gonna see us walk in here, I—”

Gundham shushed him softly as the bell of the front door dinged with our entrance.

I was immediately overcome with the sickeningly sweet scent of peppermint and cinnamon, complements of the cold winter and Christmas festivities outside. It made my head ache dully, and I silently hoped neither Kazuichi nor Gundham were overwhelmed. They were both quite sensitive to that sort of thing.

A cashier greeted us as we stepped in, and I ended up purchasing some fudge (and some vegan peppermint bark for Gundham) from her as compensation for using her dining room as a makeshift therapist’s office. After, I turned around to do a little princess wave at Gundham, who was looking at Kazuichi sadly from across the table.

It was obvious that Gundham wanted to reach out to him, to hold his hand, but, as Kazuichi had already made clear, there were so many reasons (apart from his aversion to touch) why he couldn’t do that.

Instead, I sat next to Kazuichi and scooted my chair closer to his, handing him a piece of fudge and brushing my pinky finger against his underneath the table.

He almost whined at the touch, smiling sadly at me and shoving the fudge into his mouth. “Thank you,” he said slowly, trying to speak normally around the fudge. Gross, but it made me giggle anyway.

Gundham offered a thin, thankful smile and unraveled his scarf. “Now, prince, do not reject this again. The Devas no longer plague it with their hellish presence,” he said in a surprisingly soft tone, pointing to the half-asleep hamsters on his head. His face was bright red. “Take it.”

Although he tried to protest at first, tensing up at the seemingly romantic gesture, Kazuichi eventually sighed and rejected it. “Fine. But if they call me gay again in tomorrow’s newspaper, it’s your fault,” he grumbled with a small but unmistakable smile, burying his face in the scarf.

“So, it is a no, then?” I asked after a moment. “My proposition from earlier,” I clarified. “Oh, it is alright, of course! I just… I understand the problem, Kazuichi, but it is a shame. It would indeed be nice.”

Gundham nodded with a still-pink face, trying to cover his mouth with his hand as he ate the peppermint bark I bought for him. Kazuichi merely sighed, pulling himself away from Gundham’s scarf. “Yeah, it sucks. But I mean… we could try to keep it secret, I guess? If you guys really want to, uhm, actually do this. Don’t say yes just because you feel bad. But, uhh, we could just… hang out at school or stop walking places—Sonia, don’t you have a private jet? I can fly… ugh, I dunno.”

“We are not saying yes because we feel bad, Kazuichi,” I assured him. “I… I really would like to be with you. Gundham too.”

Fumbling for his scarf again only to remember Kazuichi still had it, Gundham buried his face in his hands for a moment before clearing his throat. “Ah, uhm, yes,” he confirmed quietly.

Kazuichi hiccuped out some kind of failed attempt at a response before just smiling incredulously down at the table. “I don’t… I—”

“Shh,” I cut him off, resting my hand on top of his. Gundham awkwardly lifted his chair and tried to move it over without its legs squeaking against the tile. He set it down on the other side of Kazuichi and gingerly taking his other hand, setting aside his usual refusal to touch us. I sighed and leaned into Kazuichi, wiping a stray tear off of his cheek. “We will deal with the repercussions of this later. For now, let us just eat fudge, hmm?”

“Yeah,” he said softly. “Okay.”

Gundham and I bickered about his veganism for a few moments, Kazuichi laughing softly between us as our weird phrasing, and I realized, as the Devas crawled into my lap, there was no way I could regret this, no matter the consequences.

It was just too perfect.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading and sorry for not writing Sonsoudam in so long! I promise my next few fics with them will be less wintery. Feel free to leave feedback! <3


End file.
